


Suppose It's Too Much to Call Coincidence

by seperis



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician), American Idol RPF, Kris Allen (Musician)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-06 07:03:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seperis/pseuds/seperis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Kris finds a puppy and the laws of probability change dramatically.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Suppose It's Too Much to Call Coincidence

There is no actual _contractual_ obligation to go shopping with Adam, but at that point, Kris' publicist was willing to lie through her teeth, which is how the entire mess started. Looking back, there's a fatalistic sort of veneer on the entire day--a sepia-toned rose, if you squint--that turned one quest for the perfect pair of leather jeans into--

"Hey, is that a puppy?"

Adam turns around to watch as Kris trots back one quarter of a block to pick up a bundle of dirty yellowish fur that Adam had honestly thought was an unfortunate wig best left to die on the streets. What the hell? "What the hell?"

"I think she was following us." Heaving the--thing--into one arm, Kris runs his fingers through the matted hair--God, Adam thinks blankly, how do I cover for Kris _going crazy_? He's going to have to up the ante on stage in a serious way to deflect from this--before a tiny black button--oh, a nose--pushes out to nudge Kris' hand and tiny black eyes follow, staring up at Kris with a depressingly familiar look. "Aww, hey girl. Where's your family, huh?"

"Kris--" Adam starts, already uneasy at where this little melodrama is going, and when Kris looks up, there we go, _are you going to say something about the new love of my life that's going to take us right back to the last endlessly depressing month of misery, cheap beer, and football reruns?_ which fine, Adam's projecting, but that doesn't make it less true. "Nice dog?"

"Someone needs to clean her up," Kris says, with a faint hint of disapproval toward the masses who abandon tiny wig-like dogs in the middle of otherwise normal Midwestern streets. "Come on, we can give her a bath on the bus."

"We?"

Kris looks at him, and Adam honestly cannot understand how it is that Kris isn't already the benevolent dictator of some small, musically inclined country somewhere in the vague Pacific. Adam would do a lot more for that look that raise a fabulously coordinated army in his name. "Let me see what I brought with me?" Adam looks at the wig--_dog_\--and wonders if a good platinum toner might help with the color.

Three washes, two rinses, and a deep conditioning later (Adam didn't even argue), Kris and Allison held it still while Adam pretended he knew how to use scissors in a meaningful way on a canine (being the token gay guy does mean you learn to fake it, because sometimes, that shit is funny, but then you end up barbering a goddamn dog and wonder what the fuck you were thinking), and as it turns out, hey, it's a dog after all, and what do you know--

"It's a boy!" Allison says gleefully, scratching behind the tiny ears. "Aww, here, boy! Come here!"

A _skinny_ dog, not unlike a rat, with tiny black eyes, a tiny black nose, and surprisingly sharp tiny teeth that bare themselves at pretty much anyone but Kris, Allison, and the driver. With the worst of the matted fur cut away, he's an improbable, almost creepily perfect white, and somehow makes Adam's inexpert trim look like a deliberate retro-canine fashion choice.

Rubbing his injured ("He just nipped you! The scissors scared him!") _injured_ fingers against his jeans, Adam tries to figure out how to put the words _animal shelter_ into a sentence that won't end with his body being found several years from now stuffed in the back of the bus. Because yeah, this is going there. Kris strokes down the length of the dog's back, frowning at the bones pushing through the fragile skin, and their driver (what the hell?) comes back with three overstuffed bags with the words Petco printed on the plastic and already saying, "So what's his name?" like people on Idol tours adopt dogs all the time.

"Um, Kris?" Adam starts warily as Allison wrestles open the dry puppy food and the puppy curls up into Kris arms to stare at Adam as Kris says, "I don't know--how about Buddy?"

Adam stares at him incredulously; this could not be more Lifetime movie if they tried. "What about Spot?"

"But he has no--" Allison stops, staring at the dog thoughtfully. "Spot. For the irony?"

No, Adam thinks, appalled, no, no, no--

"I like it," Kris says, almost smiling, and the puppy rolls over in his lap, showing his belly. "Let's go with Spot."

So it could be more Lifetime movie if they tried.

* * *

It was the almost smile that did it; that's the first expression not associated with post-marital misery that Adam's gotten out of Kris since the divorce papers showed up. The night after that is still kind of a blur, but Adam has uncomfortable memories of drunk-dialing Katy and both of them crying together over the winds of love and fortune--they _used those words_, he's never touching anything Anoop mixes ever again--and waking up with notes written on both arms with a sharpie that chronicled How to Get Kris Through This.

Tonight, while Kris and Allison curl up in the front while the puppy trains them to coo on command, Adam retreats to his bunk and makes a desperate phone call.

"He has a puppy."

"Is that a euphemism?" Katy asks suspiciously; from the background beat, Katy's clubbing in LA. Adam doesn't even know how to deal with that.

"No! It's not--who have _you_ been hanging out with?" Adam demands, leaning out of the curtain to make sure Kris and Allison are still watching Spot--oh God, Adam thinks, it's name is _actually Spot_\--roll over with infatuated expressions. Allison will never leave this bus. "It's not a euphemism--if it is, okay, I don't want to know what it means, either--he's found an actual puppy."

"Wait," Katy says, "I need to--" The noise drops dramatically. "Bathroom. Okay, let me guess--he turns around, and suddenly something that you thought was like a wig turns out to be an actual dog? And--"

Adam drops the phone. "Oh my God." Warily, Adam picks up the phone again. "Tell me he called you. But I have his phone to avoid that drunk-dialing thing, so how--"

"Adam, are you there?" Katy sounds vaguely worried.

Maybe. "Katy," Adam starts slowly. "How did you--"

"Yeah, I should have said something," she says, sipping her drink loudly; Adam can hear the ice. "Just go with it."

"Just--okay, we're both sober, and this conversation _isn't_. What do you mean, _go with it_?"

Katy sighs, and from the sound, she's closed a bathroom stall. For privacy, Adam hopes; they do not have the kind of relationship where anyone uses the facilities while talking. Frankly, Adam never wants that kind of relationship with anyone. "So I'm going to go out on a limb and say he and the puppy are currently bonding with someone out by the couch? And it's kind of nauseatingly cute?"

"Allison may never leave," Adam says, stretching out on the bunk and picking at his nail polish despondently. It _is_ nauseatingly cute; Adam's worried about his blood sugar.

"Allison? He found a puppy with _Allison_?" Katy says, horrified. "She's--oh my God--"

"What? No, she wasn't even _there_. Not until we got back, anyway," Adam says, wondering if there's a single illicit substance in this entire bus. LSD could only improve this conversation, which isn't something he'd ever thought he'd be able to say. "We were just walking along and then Kris is suddenly holding a puppy and next thing I know I'm gay hairdresser to the canine world, and hey, clichés are only funny when _they don't involve dogs_."

"Huh."

Not helpful. "Katy?"

"No, no, I was thinking that when I called you a homewrecker, I really felt bad later, and now I don't."

Adam rolls on his back, staring at the top of the bunk. "I did not steal your husband. I can do this categorically, baby, and I won't use euphemisms. Want it in alphabetical order? I did not--"

Katy giggles, shaking her glass, making Adam grin, too. "Okay," she says, sounding like she's standing up, "don't worry about the puppy. If it's making him happy--and I bet it is--the puppy is your best friend. Seriously, _remember this part_, okay? The puppy--"

"Spot," Adam says fatalistically.

That throws her. "You're kidding."

"I wish."

Katy's silent for a moment. "He named it _Spot_?"

"In the interests of full disclosure," Adam makes himself say, "I did. I didn't know you _destroying his soul_ meant he lost the ability to recognize _sarcasm_."

"Ooh, big words from the man who named a dog Spot--Spot? Really?" Adam hears the stall door open. "Okay, so I want to be sure I understand--Kris found a puppy with you and you named it Spot. And now you are talking to me why?"

Adam frowns at the phone. "What does that have to do with--"

"Wow," Katy says, sounding shocked, "I now believe you didn't steal my husband."

"Are you high? Who's there with you? Do I need to call someone?"

"But I still think you wanted to, because come on, a puppy? Really, Adam. Look, I have to talk to some people--"

Adam wrinkles his nose. "Is that code for heterosexual sexcapades? I am so not listening to this."

"You want it categorical and alphabetical? I can do that. I will be--"

"Fuck and no. Go have fun. Don't worry about your husband crying himself to sleep every night in my lap or anything."

"Oh," Katy says confidently and crazily, "I definitely won't anymore. And by the way--do not say the words _animal shelter_. Just trust me on this one." She clicks off, and Adam stares down at the phone before Kris suddenly says, "Adam, he's rolling over! Check this out!"

With a final worried look at the phone--maybe he should call someone to check on Katy?--Adam crawls down from his bunk to blink at the sight of Allison passed out on the couch and Kris with a puppy in his lap. It's so meltingly adorable that Adam almost forgets Kris' ex-wife is insane, but it also reminds him she was maybe a little right; he didn't steal her husband, sure, but it wasn't from any lack of _wanting to_. Or possibly trying, but he obviously isn't very good at it, because while Katy does not have Kris, neither does he.

"Come here," Kris says, not looking up, and God help gay men trapped on buses with their drug of choice in human form, Kris looks almost happy. Helplessly, Adam joins them, watching incredulously as Spot turns his tiny head and bares his teeth when Adam tentatively reaches to rub the smooth, silky fur of his belly. "I think he likes you."

Before Adam can dispute the obvious lie, Kris jerks his hand down, trapping Adam between warm belly fur and warm human hand. Spot--_Spot_\--makes a happy barking sound and looks at Kris with wide, adoring eyes. Adam scratches Spot's fur in understanding.

"I need to--" Kris gestures in the vague direction of the bathroom, and before Adam can stop him, Spot is transferred to his lap. Spot keeps up the ruse of love and affection until they both hear the door close, then looks down at Adam's hand on his belly, then at Adam.

"Okay, so. I won't say animal shelter." Spot tilts his head back and shuts his eyes in satisfaction. Which really, this isn't the most insane thing that Adam's ever done; he lives in LA. Negotiating with a dog is pretty normal, comparatively speaking. Rubbing beneath his chin, Adam continues, "You pretend you like me. And Kris is happy. Any questions?"

Spot squirms around enough to push his head beneath Adam's hand; that's a shake if Adam's ever seen one. Rubbing the tiny ears, Adam glances up in time to see Kris looking down at them pensively. "So I guess--" Kris starts haltingly, kneeling to hide his face as Spot uses his tiny, surprisingly sharp claws to scrabble into his lap, "we need to--find someone to take him?"

Spot scrunches himself into a tiny miserable ball of fur, looking daggers at Adam as Kris strokes his ears; Adam thinks _When did I become this person?_ and then lets it go. "He's fine here," he says as Kris looks up with a dawning smile. Holy God, _this is how it happens_; the only thing that is missing is a Disney trademark, because Adam now lives in a romantic comedy. Vaguely, he wonders when he agreed to be cast as the _awesome gay best friend_. "Just leave it to me."

* * *

So that's how it started, but that's not how it ended.

* * *

It was almost the two year anniversary of American Idol when Adam began to suspect that Katy had been less high and more completely, maliciously useless as a source of information when Kris started dating--of _all people_\--Adam's PA. If there's supposed to be a message in that, Adam has no idea what it's supposed to be.

"I don't believe this," Adam tells Katy, currently in Japan or Korea or the Philippines, somewhere _not here_ being the point, and not married to Kris, which is why this entire nightmare is happening. "She wants him to _move in with her_, and I can only hide his luggage so many times before he figures out he can just go buy more."

"Huh. So Kris is still living with you?" Katy answers in stunning reinteration of the obvious. Over the phone, she makes a disgusting slurping sound with her spoon, which Adam would judge so much if he didn't have a gallon of ice cream melting in his lap right now. "What's she like?"

Adam pauses; it's not so much there are no descriptors, more that she's terrifying, and Adam's pretty sure this is some kind of commentary by 19E, or punishment for orchestrating the Great Dog Experiment of 2009, which, Adam has to admit, was fucking brilliant. "You know that club no one talks about, down on--"

"The one with the--oooh."

"Yeah." Beneath the spike heel of Laura the PA, Adam's life has become something that should not resemble, and yet does, living in a BDSM scene, but without anything that makes it fun, like orgasms, or hey, _another guy_, though she has the pain covered. More than once, Adam's thought maybe he should ask for a safeword, except that would be admitting she's out-topping him and _winning_. "It's like that."

Katy's quiet for a moment. "And Kris?"

Adam stares up at the ceiling and takes another spoonful of melting cookie-dough before trying to answer. "He seems happy." Then. "So was Kris into--"

"Not in so many words," Katy says devastatingly. "Though I always kind of suspected--"

Adam shuts his eyes. "Please shut up before I start to cry; I'm not nearly that drunk yet."

"Get some vodka," Katy answers practically, _such_ a smart girl, and Adam completely forgets why he is holed up in his own room in his own house until he opens the door and someone who is not Laura the PA moans. "Oh God," Katy echoes in shock as Adam leans against the wall and shuts his eyes in a completely useless attempt to block out the horror. "They're--"

"Here, yes, this is my life, thanks for caring." The kitchen is four separate sounds away and Adam really wonders why the hell the alcohol is out here and not in his room, as obviously it really needs to be. Grabbing the first bottle in sight, Adam gets back to his room and pretends he's doesn't feel used. Crawling back on the bed, Adam watches Spot licking his spoon and tries to care. "This is totally your fault," Adam says, shifting Spot into his lap and taking a long drink from the bottle. "You just had to find yourself or whatever shit--that's _so nineties_ by the way--"

"Oh please," she says, voice slurring a little, "you're _blaming me_\--"

"And look what happened! _Laura the PA._"

"It's not like I could award him to you in the divorce or something--"

"Why _not_? _Look what happened_." Spot looks up, then crawls up his chest on tiny paws to stare into his eyes before licking at a smear of melting ice cream and pretends it's affection. Adam will take it anyway. "She asked him to marry her."

From the other side of the phone, something fragile breaks with great energy. Adam wishes he had something breakable; he's a huge fan of things that break on impact. Seriously, a redecoration of his room is totally in order. After a few long seconds, he hears Katy gulp a little and wipes his eyes surreptitiously on the edge of the comforter. "Yeah. Me too."

"Is she--" Katy takes a deep, shuddering breath. "I mean--"

"Oh God, baby, no," Adam soothes. "You're totally hotter. Blonde by way of Loreal, honey. Cannot coordinate. Just--no. Totally a trade down."

Katy sniffles and takes another drink. "Thanks." Then, "So where's Spot anyway?"

Adam looks down at just as Spot manages to fall headfirst into the ice cream. Reaching in, Adam fishes him out before turning the carton on its side and decides not to care that melted ice cream is spilling everywhere. It's just that kind of a night. "Hiding in here like anyone sane." Wiping ice cream from Spot's ear, Adam pushes him back toward the carton. "Is ice cream bad for dogs?" he asks belatedly. Not that he's coming between Spot's teeth and that carton; that's why there are vets.

"Not for that one," Katy answers cryptically. "You know, don't worry about Laura the PA."

Adam blinks at the phone. "They picked out their china. She _picked out my suit_. And by the way, holy shit, the woman has no taste, it's the seventies by way of _evil_ around here--"

"No, seriously," Katy says, totally crazy, but that's why Adam likes her, "don't. Just--um, just make sure you take his guitar, okay? It'll help."

"His--what are you--"

"I am going to pass out now?" Katy says thoughtfully. "I think. Night."

Totally crazy. Adam watches Spot lick his way back into the carton and takes another drink. "She has a suit for you, too, you know. Polyester blend. And _white_. Think about it."

Spot looks up, ears raised in alarm. Somehow, that makes Adam feel a lot better.

* * *

It's not so much that Adam can't plan a bachelor party--sure, he never has before, but whatever, Adam knows parties--but more that Laura the PA hates every idea he has, which makes him love them all, even the ones that involve a football-esque theme and imported beer.

It is not classy, Adam admits to himself, and perhaps the uniforms aren't _entirely_ accurate, but accuracy is overrated, and a stripper football team is really helping him to appreciate the sport.

"They're guys," Laura the PA says in stentorian tones while rearranging his entire schedule to increase his misery. What-the-fuck-ever.

"I can find girls." Their uniforms, at least, don't require a new design. Adam tilts his head at the fit of the pants; maybe liquid latex? "Or I could just take him to Vegas if you're going to be a bitch about it."

Laura the PA glares at him. "Fuck yourself. Vegas? Better than _that_." She points at his favorite feature. "Are they--is that a _g-string_?"

"A jock strap will show under the latex," Adam says sweetly, and that is how Adam ends up on a plane with Kris, Kris' guitar, and Spot, because even Spot's desecration of his bed while he was sleeping (passed out) _sleeping_ does not deserve staying with Laura the PA. At least, not until Adam's sure his lawyer can get Spot out of a homicide conviction, because from the way Spot stares at her neck, he's figured out what a jugular does and where he can get one.

"I still don't get why I need the guitar," Kris says as they emerge into the cool of the airport, where no, their hoodies aren't hiding anything, but that's why they have enough security to set up a small government if they need to. Hooking an arm over Kris' shoulders, Adam ignores the growing attention, feeling Kris huddling closer to his side with every shouted question.

"You never know," Adam answers vaguely; Kris hasn't written anything since Laura the PA reorganized his life, which really should have been a warning signal, but at the time, Adam was just relieved Kris' sudden descent into _My Chemical Romance_ esque stylings had ended, and _Fallout Boy_ was no longer on repeat on the ipod. Living every day worried a missing eyeliner would become Kris' tribute to Pete Wentz was _exhausting_.

Spot squirms around to look at Kris sadly from the crook of Adam's arm; Adam is not stupid and did not even _think_ dog carrier, and if he had, the scratches on his wrist would have immediately banished the thought. Kris sighs as they come to the car, hiding the flinch at every question tossed at them like it's dynamite that might explode at a moment's notice while Adam pretends he's not holding a purse-size dog in a public place and this isn't actually his real life.

"Okay," Adam says as soon as they're behind close doors, "though I have never been married, I am not feeling the joy and whatever that a lifetime of television has promised me people like you feel on days like this. Spill."

Kris sets his guitar carefully on the bed, looking at Adam like he might dispute the fact he's kind of utterly miserable. The expression breaks almost immediately, and Adam crosses the room and pushes the guitar aside, wrapping an arm around Kris. Spot barks affirmation from a chair across the room, curled on top of Adam's make-up case.

"I--it's not that Laura's not great," he says slowly, like the words hurt, which they should; it's goddamn _Laura the PA_, "but I--don't think this is working?"

"Oh, thank God," Adam breathes. "Can I call and tell her? Please? Consider this my Christmas present for like, the next five years."

Kris jerks his head around, staring at Adam like he'd never seen him before. "I--what?"

"What? The rampant hostility and seething hatred were _subtle_?"

"I thought--" Kris frowns. "Actually, you know, I have no idea what I thought. This last week--" Kris takes a deep breath, "--okay, seriously, I'm such a loser, but--"

"No, baby," Adam says soothingly, resisting the urge to find Kris' phone and speed-dial this mess to an end right now. "Rebound, _rebound_. It happens to everyone--"

"--I kept thinking about--" Kris flushes bright red, and apparently, this conversation is going to go somewhere really-- "It's--she's exhausting and--I mean, it's like, everything I do--I mean," And impossibly, Kris goes even redder, which might as well be a billboard, "I mean, does she really have to _always be right_?"

"Is that," Adam takes a second, staring at Spot, because he doesn't think either of them will get through this if they have to look at each other, "a really obscure euphemism?"

Kris lets out an explosive breath, almost limp with relief. "Yeah."

It's not like Adam _objects_ to heterosexuals having sex; it's just something they should keep in the privacy of their own homes. But this is Kris, so he'll deal. "We should probably talk about this," Adam tells the wall as Spot yawns in satisfaction, like he knows exactly what Adam is going to have to listen to and is enjoying it a lot. "Would alcohol help?"

"God," Kris says gratefully, "yes, please."

"That's my boy." Squeezing Kris, Adam eyes the minibar grimly. "Let's get this over with."

* * *

There are things Adam figured out about Kris early on; Kris is tactile, a professional-grade flirt, and when drunk, uses both with innocent yet devastating effectiveness. This is one of many and varied reasons that Kris and intoxication in a public setting would be a recipe for both horrible friendship-ending disaster and three to five fairly specialized fantasies.

It's not like Adam didn't _know better_; it's just that he had to give a dissertation on safe words and learned things about Kris and his relationship with Laura the PA that combined with alcohol ended up at a place where he just did not care.

The next morning, Adam wakes with the beginnings of a truly epic hangover to see a tanned, attractive semi-blonde wearing his shirt and takes a moment. "Oh my God no."

She scowls at him, then looks back down at Spot, mouth curving in a helpless smile as he crawls into her lap. "Yeah, no, and fuck no."

He's still wearing pants, but heterosexuality can be tricky like that. "I didn't--"

"You didn't, he didn't, and oh God, no, I didn't. My mother would _kill me_." Spot nudges her hand, and she giggles as he rolls onto his back to stare up at her with melting affection. "Cute dog, by the way."

Warily, Adam sits up and does a check of the bed; on her other side, Kris is passed out cold, but is also still dressed. Adam revises his alert level from _I will pretend this is not happening and hope it goes away_ to _So this is unexpected._ "So what--"

"Short version? Impromptu concert on the Strip, Elvis impersonator, chapel, and a fan. How's your math?"

"Fuck."

"Luckily, the fan is also my best friend who just broke up with her boyfriend, so she called me to ask me to be maid of honor. I thought there might be a problem when she didn't know which of you she was supposed to marry?"

Now that he thinks about it, he remembers rhinestones and making out with someone in a white leisure suit and sideburns in a tiny bathroom while something that could have indeed been a wedding march played. "Huh. They didn't--"

"No. Thank God," she breathes. "She's sleeping it off. However," she takes a deep breath, staring at Spot. "So you're Adam Lambert?"

"Why are you framing that as a question like you hope the answer is no?"

"There's um--" She swallows hard. "The paparazzi sort of--found you. Found us? At the chapel. And--"

Adam shuts his eyes, hangover increasing with a vengeance.

"I found your car--are those jeans painted on or what? I'm pretty sure what I had to do to get your keys qualifies as sex in some states--and got us back here, but they chased us the entire way and your security was really--laughing a lot? _So_ not helpful. I wouldn't--turn on the television? Or like, go outside." She looks at the door, eyes narrowed. "Trust me, if I could have gotten away, I would have. My hair looks awful in the pictures."

"Ouch," Adam says sympathetically, digging for his phone. One look at the screen is enough. "Oh, this is interesting."

"So is there someone you can call to get me out of here--?" she says hopefully. "You threw up on my only outfit, so--"

"I did _not_. Just a second." There we go, text and-- "My assistant just quit by text message. So far, this day is really looking up."

"She seemed really--" The girl hesitates, looking wary. "--unhappy when I woke her up."

Adam blinks at her, then at Spot; life does not do this. "You called--"

"I didn't know where you were staying!" she answers defensively. "Neither did she, but when she hung up, I tried speed-dial two--"

"You called _Brad_?"

"And he told me where you were staying and how to contact your security and what to tell them. And he told me to take pictures? Which I did, but I didn't send to anyone but him yet." She blows out a breath. "I mean, fine, if I'm going to be co-star of the _American Idol Threesome Scandal_ drama? I deserve whatever the Enquirer will pay, okay? Then maybe my mom won't disinherit me if I get her like, a BMW or something."

"Wow." Adam stares at her as he hits dial, then looks at Spot, who yawns complacently. "What's your name?"

"Anna."

"Perfect--hi, Laura!" Pulling the phone back from his ear, Adam waits as Laura the PA monologues at a decibel usually reserved for megaphones, reaching for the room service menu and checking availability. "Hungry?"

Anna looks wary. "Um, a little--"

"Can you order--never mind, just get one of everything on the menu." Adam picks up the phone again when it sounds out Laura the PA is running out of breath. "Laura? Listen, it's all--oh, Kris? Just a second, let me check--Anna, baby, is Kris awake yet?"

Anna crumples the menu between her hands, eyes narrowing; trying to look soothing, Adam grabs for her wrists when she looks in danger of felonious assault, shaking his head frantically when she starts to open her mouth. "Okay, I am not telling Kris that--oh. Well, that's--kind of awesome, actually. I really hope I never see you again, and restraining orders are _definitely_ in your future. Maybe you should think about finding a good therapist? Right. Bye!"

"You did _not_\--"

"You were going to sell our pictures to the paparazzi; neither of us have the moral high ground here." Anna shuts her mouth with a frown. "Want a job?"

"You--what?"

"Well," Adam says; seriously, he could not have planned this better. "Right, drunken threesome in Vegas with optional near-marriage _or_....new PA helps her boss and his best friend back to their room after drunken evening on the night he breaks up with his fiancée! It's a heartwarming story! Your mom won't be mad! No more Laura the PA! Everyone wins!"

"Seriously," she says, "are you crazy?"

"I think I pay at a competitive rate?"

"I'm a dancer."

"Then yeah, I can beat that." He pauses hopefully. "I'm not hearing no."

"That's because I'm not stupid," she answers, cradling Spot in one arm and picking up the crumpled menu as she climbs out of bed, revealing a pair of Kris' jeans whose cuffs hover about mid-calf; the girl is _tall_. "Everything on the menu, right?"

"If you can get me mimosas, I'll throw in a bonus."

Suspicious brown eyes stare into his as she picks up the phone. "I keeping the pictures, though. I'm holding you to this."

"Shock me more," Adam says, stretching comfortably on the mattress. Kris makes a sad sound, bloodshot eyes staring into Adam's pathetically. "Hey, baby, how you feeling?"

"Can you kill me?"

Adam grins, rolling on his side as Anna out-talks whoever she managed to get on the phone, watching Kris creep the width of the bed to collapse against his shoulder just as Anna says, "Oh, and do you have that stuff you make for hangovers? Ask Mindy; she knows the mix. Yeah, four or so? They really drank a lot."

Against his shoulder, Kris mumbles, "Who's that?"

Kris' hair has achieved new levels of messiness; Adam frowns, trying to smooth down the more aggressive spikes. "Just my PA. Pretty sure I broke up with your girlfriend for you, so I needed a new one. Go back to sleep. I'll wake you up when breakfast gets here."

Kris sighs, going boneless. "Yeah, okay."

* * *

Anna is in fact a really bad PA, but to be fair, she's never done it before, and Laura the PA left a mess behind before security caught her (arrest! It's like Christmas!), but she has four things going for her: a.) she's not Laura the PA, which is so much a plus, b.) she doesn't live to make his life miserable, c.) Spot inexplicably adores her and Spot hates pretty much everyone, and d.) she has no interest in hooking up with Kris. At all.

"Not really my type," she says, poking through Laura's laptop with a horrified expression etched onto her face and dragging him over to stare, appalled, at each terrifying picture she uncovers. Adam wants to tell her to stop, but it's like some kind of post-modern car-accident metaphor; it's filthy and horrifying and _they can't look away_. "God, is that--is that an _espresso machine_? What is she _doing to it_?"

"I--I don't know," Adam says, feeling ill and like he may never have sex again. "I think that's the tour manager from--okay, no, delete that shit now."

"I was zipping them for blackmail," Anna answers, opening the next jpeg with an intent expression. "You know, for when the restraining order ends?"

"Are you collecting on all my employees?" Adam says, sitting on the arm of her chair to check the zip files; he recognizes about half the names, including his own.

"Of course. I've watched your publicity. You're like, one drunken expose away from a male pregnancy paternity suit. No one wants that."

"I kind of want to marry you," Adam says and almost means it.

Anna gives him a frown, nose wrinkling. "You're not my type.

"Because I'm gay? I can do straight. People do it all the time!" Adam considers. "Though I'm going to admit now, we'll be looking at infidelity in less than three days. If you have a brother, probably before the reception starts."

"It's more that you're a guy," she says, adding the picture to the zip archive. "No offense."

Adam is kind of helpless in the face of this kind of compatibility. "So--oh. My. God."

Anna slams her hand over the screen and shuts her eyes. "No no no, just--" From between his fingers, Adam sees her groping for _zip to archive_. "I did _not_ see that."

"So I need a shower," Adam says blankly. "And maybe a prefrontal lobotomy?"

"I have whiskey?"

"Seriously," Adam says, "a sexless marriage would be so progressive of us. Think Andrea Dworkin and--what's his name? The guy she married and didn't fuck?"

"And yet I'm untempted," she answers, zipping the entire folder entitled _Kris_ and hiding it where no one but a sympathetic DA will ever have to see it. "Besides," she murmurs to herself as Adam goes to look for glasses, "Kris would totally kill me."

* * *

Anna likes delicate looking blondes with Southern accents, as it turns out; it's eerie and Adam finds himself staring at Spot a lot, because there is like, coincidence, and then there's finding his PA soulmate in a gay Vegas dancer after potentially almost marrying (or watching Kris marry; he's still not sure which would have been worse) her roommate. The odds are astronomical, and also, creepy.

"Well, yeah," Katy says from France, where she's apparently shooting a film that may or may not be in French, or possibly guest starring in _Merlin_. "It's _Spot_."

"I don't get high anymore," Adam tells her venemously, looking at the latest memo from his publicist and blatantly ignoring the most recent recommendations of tracks for his next album. Their idea of edgy seems to be Alanis Morisette by way of Korn, and that's an unholy combination just as a concept--the reality is so much worse. "I have _you_. It's like an LSD trip a phone call. What the hell--"

"Bradley James is even hotter in person," Katy sighs, sidetracking the entire Spot question. "Check your phone--they had to shower three times today."

Adam gropes frantically for his iphone. "What were you--"

"Well," she says, sounding pleased. "I got a little dirty, too."

"Katy," Adam breathes, scrolling, "didn't they notice--"

"Adam," Katy answers, "go to number forty-eight…"

Adam takes a deep breath and tries to remember how to form sentences. "So that's how you got those pictures."

"They were kind of distracted," she purrs. "Happy?"

"Love you, bye," Adam answers, completely distracted. Spot crawls onto his stomach to glance at the phone with a slight air of disapproval. "You really don't appreciate--huh. So that would _not_ have been my guess for top."

Adam is alerted to the hovering presence of Kris by Spot's cheerful bark, leaping off Adam's stomach (and cleverly knocking the phone face-down on the bed). Despite having lived here for over a year, Kris still acts like a slightly unwelcome guest instead of finally acknowledging his future as a permanent resident, though in the wrong room entirely. That conversation, Adam thinks, is one they should really have one day. "How was the date?" Since it's not close to midnight, Adams' going with _horrible failure_, because Kris is only slutty enough to tease, not enough to follow through if it's not working.

Spot growls a little as Kris picks him up, stroking his head gently as he sits at the foot of the bed. "Okay, I guess. Kind of--" Kris makes a see-saw motion. "She's. I don't know. Indecisive?"

Compared to Laura the Former PA, anything less than a 'yes, now' is probably pretty indecisive. Watching Kris slump over Spot, however, isn't something Adam can deal with. "Come here," he says, watching in interest as Kris immediately crawls up the bed, sprawling in what should be an awkward tangle of limbs and just isn't. Spot relocates to curl comfortably against Kris' hip, in easy petting range of them both. "You know, you don't actually have to date."

Kris sighs, folding his arms underneath his chin and staring at the headboard pensively. "I'm beginning to see the wisdom of that approach."

"There are tours to be planned, albums to be made, groupies to be--fine, no groupies, don't look like that." Kris sighs, and Adam reaches over, rubbing the back of his neck until he untenses enough to smile, lashes falling shut and bearing a startling resemblance to Spot at his bonelessly happy best. "You'll be fine," Adam murmurs, surprised at the tenderness in his voice, threading his fingers through Kris' hair. "Promise."

"I just forgot how hard this is," Kris murmurs, sinking into the mattress. "Katy and I just, you know? And it worked. I'm not good at this."

"No one is; some people just fake it better than others."

Kris sniffles a little, one hand groping out across the mattress; at first, Adam thinks he's looking for Spot, but when he finds Adam's t-shirt he twines his fingers in it, holding on. "Thanks for--you know. Waiting to make fun of me."

"I'm storing it up," Adam murmurs, following the slight pull of Kris' hand as Spot scrambles up the bed to make himself comfortable on the pillow above their heads. "Get some sleep."

* * *

Caroline the Orthodontist is the first time Adam realizes that saying "It's like watching the Discovery Channel" can be less a euphemism and more an actual literal description of events. Spot's reaction--bared teeth, eyes filled with hate--had been worrying enough, and only Adam scooping him up and retreating to the far couch where Anna had set up shop to make a huge mess of his schedule and cleverly get him out of every boring meeting by way of gross incompetence had saved them all from a protracted investigation by LA detectives and a serious cleaning bill.

Anna's reaction had been disturbingly similar; dropping on the couch, Adam holds Spot away from his throat and throws a leg across Anna's lap before she can get to her feet and from the look on her face, commit murder one in the middle of his living room.

Luckily, Kris and Caroline the Orthodontist aren't paying any attention at all, and Adam manages a frantic wave as they leave, shifting his weight until he's half in Anna's lap and half braced against the armrest; fuck, she's unnaturally strong. "What. The. Hell?" Adam hisses as the door closes, dropping Spot and checking his arm to see if he needs stitches. With a heave, Anna dumps him on the floor and goes for her laptop, typing frantically. "Are you--what are you doing?"

"Looking for places to hide her body, duh." Scrambling back onto the couch, Adam looks at googlemaps. "I don't know--who would have better people to cover up a dead body? I'm thinking George Lucas--"

"Are you crazy?"

Anna looks at him with crazy, crazy eyes. "That--are you serious? Did you _see her_?"

Adam stares his incomprehension.

"She's _evil_," Anna says, enunciating each word, "and we have to get rid of her before she kills Kris. Okay, you're not rocking Lucas--how about Cameron? Wouldn't be the first time--"

"I'm seriously wondering why I hired you," Adam says slowly, even though he doesn't. Spot returns from staring longingly at the door and plants himself in front of the couch, looking at Adam in horrified disappointment.

"At this point, I'm wondering why I _accepted_\--you need people for this. I really have to talk to your publicist this week," she answers, opening another window. "Here we go--okay, they're on their way to the restaurant. So far so good."

"Are you--stalking Kris?" Adam forgets he's kind of terrified; she's _brilliant_.

"I bugged his phone's GPS," Anna answers, typing something into a pop-up box he doesn't recognize as part of the googlemaps family of programs. "Yours too."

Adam nods; of course she did. "Kind of figured."

"Anyway, alert set--when they leave the restaurant, we'll be ready to track where they go." Sitting back, she moves the laptop to the floor and taps her knee. "Come on, Spot, it's okay."

With a distrustful look at Adam, Spot leaps into her lap. As he settles under her hands, Adam stares between them and tries to decide what question he wants to start with.

"Okay, so," Anna says, "you are so much less LA than I thought."

"_What_?"

"Crystals and astrology, sure, but--couldn't you _sense_ something wrong there? Her aura screams serial killer--I can't believe you didn't feel it!"

Adam opens his mouth, then shuts it. He had to have heard that wrong. "Serial killer?"

"Totally." Scowling at him, she pulls Spot up against her chest, stroking his head. "Don't worry, baby," she coos. "I got it covered." She glares at Adam. "Unlike _some people_ here, I pay attention."

"You think she's a _serial killer_?"

"Um, yes, and if you'd warned me, we could have gotten through this without Kris leaving the house!" she says, crazily. "Next time, give me two hours and I'll plant some coke in her car or something. We seriously do not need to deal with this kind of shit when it can be avoided. I'm staying here tonight; where's a spare bedroom?"

Adam blinks and points up the stairs.

"Cool. Listen for an alert--she has a one mile deviation, but I don't think she's going to try anything tonight. I'm going to take a shower; yell if it goes off?" Clutching Spot to her chest, she stands up. "Oh, and if Harry from security calls? Tell him I've got it this time. We'll set up a system tomorrow."

"Right." Adam picks up the laptop as she wanders away; he could call the police, but honestly, they've been to his parties. They'll just ask for some of the mescaline. "I'll just--sit here. And wait for an alert."

"We'll talk when I'm done," she calls terrifyingly from the stairs. Yeah, Adam thinks, staring at the two tiny dots--so she bugged Caroline the Orthodontist too? So not a surprise--and wonders if it's time to wake up.

* * *

Anna's crazy infects him; by midnight; Adam's pacing the foyer with his phone clutched in one hand and resisting the urge to call Harry and have him go get Kris and carry him home. Anna's enthusiastic agreement had convinced him it was in fact as insane as it sounded, but that doesn't change the instinct; suddenly, the tiny GPS dots are malevolent, and what if they both left their phones at the restaurant?

"They didn't," Anna answers, pointing at a green spot. "That's her car."

"I'm sure," Adam says, "that you should scare me. And yet I don't care."

"Whatever. I'm working for _you_." Wet blue hair bundled into a clip and face clean of make-up, she looks wholesome and kind of adorable, with a puppy in her lap and a light of vicious hatred filling her brown eyes. "Okay, so--just next time? If you're going to let him do this kind of shit--"

"_Let_?"

Anna rolls her eyes. "Is this like he's supposed to find himself or something and then realize he's been your boyfriend all this time and didn't notice? Because let me tell you, this is probably not going to be a situation where he's just going to go "oh, Adam, I should have known" though, yeah, he _should know_, can't fault you for that. This is going to be _last man standing_, you get me?"

"No," Adam says, but he kind of does.

"And that's why you have me." She frowns. "Okay, we have movement--" Taking out her phone, she thumbs speed-dial five, which apparently is Harry. "Hey baby--yeah, they're moving. It's a straight shot back; give her five hundred yards and then pounce if she deviates, got me? Love you too. Bye!"

Weirdly mesmerized, Adam watches the green dot wind its way through the Hollywood Hills and strangely, right by Cameron's house, which has a lot of space that could easily hide a body and _holy shit, he's thinking about this_. As the car passes security and pulls into the driveway, Adam fights the nearly irresistible to go outside, scoop Kris out of the car, and hide him somewhere highly defensible, because now that he thinks about it, Caroline the Orthodontist's perfect teeth had been bared in something that _wasn't actually a smile_.

A heart-stopping ten minutes after the car is parked, Kris comes in, looking at Adam and Anna in surprise. "Hey," he says, taking off his jacket and looking between them before picking up a frantically affectionate Spot. "What--"

"Tomorrow's schedule," Adam answers easily as Spot licks Kris' face with desperate enthusiasm. "Anna, my fridge is your fridge."

"Thanks, Adam!" she says, bright and a little awed, like a PA for Adam Lambert _should be_ and she just isn't, ever. Kris gives her a wave, following Adam up the stairs with Spot locked in his arms. "Good night!"

Kris follows Adam into his room, a faint frown gathering between his eyebrows as he sits at the foot of the bed. "So?" Adam says, busying himself in the bathroom; his evening skin care routine couldn't compete with Anna yelling updates on how she was reorganizing his entire life roster to better facilitate 'handling these kinds of situations'. "Not that this will happen again," Anna had said darkly. Adam doesn't really want to know; he needs to be able to claim plausible deniability in front of a grand jury one day.

"I don't know," Kris answers absently. "I mean, she was nice, but she kept talking about my teeth. Like, a lot."

Adam comes to the doorway, moisturizer clutched in one hand and something in his brain slowly breaking. It feels like sanity. "Your _teeth_?"

"She's an orthodontist?" Kris shrugs. "She kept saying that a few bleachings, and they could be mistaken for pearls."

"Uh huh." Adam turns to stare at the container of exfoliator with a sinking feeling. "Pearls."

"She was wearing a necklace of them," Kris answers helpfully. "It was kind of neat, though I've never seen pearls that white before. They were kind of weirdly shaped, too."

Setting down the moisturizer carefully, Adam leans against the doorway to avoid falling. "You know," he says slowly, glancing at Spot, frozen beneath Kris' hand and staring at Adam in desperate hope, "I didn't really--get a good vibe from her."

Kris' head snaps up. "Oh?"

"Very much not." Coming back in the room, Adam sits down beside Kris. "Okay, take a shower and come back here; I was working on something and I want--"

Kris' uneasiness melts away immediately. "Sure." Putting Spot down on the bed, Kris gets to his feet. "Be right back."

As soon as Adam hears his door close and the shower come on (it's not beneath him to listen at the door when _Kris' life is at stake_), Adam creeps down the stairs to find Anna chatting on YIM. "Anna."

She turns to look at him in question.

"Teeth." Her eyes widen as she covers her mouth with one hand. Adam stares at the wall above her head. "Look, I don't want to know, okay?"

Anna drops her hand and grins. "Got it."

* * *

"…and then the next day, they find like, five bodies in her basement with no teeth," Adam tells Katy happily. "Close call there, but luckily Kris had decided not to see her again anyway." It had probably helped that Anna had hacked into Kris' voicemail and deleted her messages. Just in case.

"Wow." Katy blows out a startled breath. "How did they find out?"

"I don't know," Adam answers truthfully, since he hadn't checked Anna's computer, and God knows he's not nearly stupid enough to actually ask. It had involved the help of Kris' PA, who had given up autonomy after a two hour lunch with Anna, and now Anna, and by extension, Adam, has access to not only Kris' schedule, but most if not all of his movements. The only real limitation is when Kris forgets his phone, but Anna's "working on that" had encouraged him not to ask. Ever. "Close call, though."

"Yeah," Katy answers vaguely. "How's Kris?"

"Working on his album," Adam answers, less pleased; Kris is in the middle of writer's block and seeing him strumming his guitar with a hopeless expression has become a daily source of heartbreak. "I don't know--maybe I should get him out of LA for a while? Clear his head?" Avoid more accidental dates with tooth-stealing serial killers, which is a goddamn specialized career choice, true, but Adam's feeling paranoid these days. What are the chances of even _finding_ one of those?

"Probably a good idea," Katy answers absently; two new sets of pictures have introduced Adam to more than he had ever thought he wanted to know about Bradley James' cock, and knowing does not preclude wanting to know _more_. "No, wait, I'm coming back in a few weeks, and I want to stop by and say hi."

Before Anna, Adam was the kind of guy who would not, of course, interfere with Kris seeing his ex-wife, even if he thought it was a.) a horrible, terrible idea and b.) _a really fucking bad idea_; however, this is after Anna and sudden cosmic powers attached to a laptop and the contents of two 4chan chatrooms, where Anna apparently spends more time than can possibly be healthy and regularly participates in raids on unsuspecting cat-abusers through three separate proxies. She's like an Evil Overlord ™ Minion or something.

He's still not sure what that makes him, but he's uncomfortably aware he can't keep up this level of denial for much longer.

Telling Anna about Katy's call, Anna frowns; she hasn't exactly moved in, more not-left, since she and her last girlfriend broke up and apparently, they share the same online social circles and she's worried about her condo being bugged or firebombed or something. "What flight?" she asks, opening the laptop.

"No." Anna scowls up at him. "She's his ex-wife. We like her!"

"Ex-wife," Anna says, slowly and clearly, like he's an idiot and doesn't know what the words stand for. "I am not feeling the affection."

"She's a small southern blonde," Adam answers dryly, wondering when he authorized Anna to turn another spare bedroom into a working office slash war room for Anonymous.

"And straight as fuck, if these reports are anything to go by," Anna answers huffily; reports? What reports? "Look, far be it from me to interfere--"

"Since _when_?"

"But _ex-wife_. He's in a fragile place and half the reason Katy even divorced him was that she thought you were fucking him!" Anna answers terrifyingly; how the fuck does she know that? "She knows now you _didn't_, and Kris is vulnerable, and she's probably feeling all--nostalgic--and presto, we are in a complicated exes situation and seriously, I wanted to take a week off sometime soon, but if she's here there's no way I can--"

"We aren't. Doing anything. To Katy." With a physical effort, Adam doesn't add 'yet', because denial is not merely a river in Egypt but a lifestyle choice. "And anyway, Kris is--" Adam takes a deep breath. "He said he met someone."

Anna tilts her head back, staring at him upside down with an aggravated look. "She coming here first?"

"Yes." Leaning against the doorway, Adam tries to pretend this isn't exactly what it is.

"What time?"

"Seven."

Anna smirks. "See you then."

* * *

To Adam's surprise, despite ten minutes of staring at her (Adam keeps the memory of her discomfort to entertain him while Kris is out), neither Spot nor Anna react to Melody the Accountant; after Kris is gone, looking worried and pleased at the same time, Adam turns on Anna. "Okay, what the hell?"

"Well?" Anna exchanges a helpless look with Spot. "She's kind of--laid back?" She raises a hand, tilting it back and forth. "Kind of vanilla. I'm picking up _interested in a committed relationship_ with optional children, three or five. Her work history bears that out."

Feeling betrayed, Adam leans over the back of the couch, staring over her shoulder at the state of California's work registration site. "Thirty and has had _two jobs_? One is a promotion, that doesn't even _count_."

"Stay at home mother with a degree in child psychology, father's a lawyer, two brothers and a sister all in creepily professional suburban careers, likes cats and dogs, paid off student loans," Anna drones fatalistically, changing tabs, "no arrests, no indictments, no _speeding tickets_, with a rock solid credit score and a minor in contemporary music. She also," Anna takes a deep breath, looking faintly nauseated, "has three writing credits with Sony and plays guitar."

"That's--" Adam stares at the screen, appalled.

"_And_," Anna says, with the look of someone bearing news of a recent death, "she loves American Idol and more specifically _you_, and has gone to like, half your concerts. She and Kris will have like, four dates of conversation before they get past your awesome, okay? Four. Dates. I mean, the first two won't even get past 2009. This? Is a problem."

Holy fuck, it is. "I really need to lie down."

"You really need to stop being a pussy and do something," Anna answers, snapping the laptop shut. "But. Believe it or not, there is rhyme and reason to the universe; Katy is on a plane back to LA for a surprise visit. Don't look like that. I know everything."

Adam looks down at a fall of pale green and pink-streaked platinum hair; since her break-up, she's been in an experimental color phase with highly questionable results. "So should I start drinking now or wait until I have to see the soap opera unfold in my living room?"

"Oh ye of little faith. Katy visits, sees Kris blissfully happy with a woman who isn't her; default, she's going to hate her. Kris will not be amused by her jealousy, the new girlfriend will not be amused that she's a shorter, less hot, ash blonde version of his actress ex-wife, and with any kind of luck, they'll take care of the problem for us!" Anna grins up at him, pleased. "And I don't have to hack into the FAA! Everyone wins!"

Her smile fades as she turns on the couch, looking at Adam, expression slowly changing from surprise to speculative to something very like satisfaction. "Oh," she says, voice soft. "_Really_."

Pushing himself off the couch, Adam starts toward the stairs, feeling Anna watching him. "Tell me when they get back."

"Oh, I will," Anna purrs. "And hey, if you have any ideas? I'm always available to listen."

* * *

Actual work-work, as it turns out, decides to interfere in Adam's personal life at exactly the wrong time; Adam has just enough time to greet Katy at the airport and watch Kris take her to get settled at her hotel before staring in betrayal at his surprisingly well-scheduled week and wonders why Anna suddenly decided to improve so dramatically in her PA skills.

"Just trust me," Anna answers vaguely when he calls her to ask why she's being a competent PA when really, her charm is that she's just not. "There's a plan."

Between soul-sucking meetings, endless hours in the studio adjusting no more than fourteen seconds of a single goddamn remix, and three horrible parties that would have been improved immensely by the application of PCP and a competent mass murderer, Adam realizes it's Friday and for the first time in his life, the very idea of going anywhere that isn't his bed makes him want to cry.

It's nearly one when Adam gets home to a dark house without a Kris-shaped presence leaving random lights on to facilitate night journeys to the kitchen or an Anna-shaped one to worry him about his own declining moral standards. Flipping on the light, the kitchen is irritatingly clean of cereal bowls and plates from microwave pizza. Between Melody the Accountant and Katy, Kris could literally be anywhere in LA; in fact, he could literally _be between them_, which he wishes to God Anna hadn't mentioned as a vague possibility because he's too tired to stay awake and that's a vision to haunt his nightmares.

Going into his room, Adam ignores the light switch and the fact he's still wearing shoes, crawling into bed with a low, pathetic moan and--the bed moves, and it's not him that moves it.

Adam thinks about panicking as an academic exercise and then realizes he just doesn't care. "If you're a stalker," he tells the vague left side of the bed before burying his face in a pillow, "I'll be horrified in about ten hours, okay? Just shut up until then."

The bed moves in what feels like embarrassment. "Um," Kris says shakily. "So you might think this is weird."

Adam lifts his head, surprised to find one am is not nearly as late as it was five seconds ago. "Kris?"

"Would you believe," Kris tries, head poking up from the vast distance separating one side of the bed from the other, "that I just mixed up our rooms?"

Levering both elbows beneath him, Adam stares at the Kris-shaped shadow and reaches over to turn on the lamp. It's been a week of near-misses, and apparently, Adam missed a lot more than he thought, because Kris looks _terrible_. Sunken brown eyes circled in rings like bruises, and a shade of pale more appropriate to those who live underground and call themselves mole people. Well, someone calls them mole people, anyway. "Whoa," Adam says softly. "Come here, baby."

Kris sighs, crawling across the bed to drop beside him moodily. This close, it's so much worse; Kris looks drained and exhausted and maybe a little bit angry, which is new and interesting information that Adam thinks really needs exploration right now. Shifting onto his side, Adam tucks a pillow beneath his head and watches Kris stare up at darkened ceiling fatalistically.

"You look like shit," Adam says, though to be fair, Kris' worst days are still an order of magnitude better than most people's best. Kris grins a little, the corners of his mouth softening in a rueful smile. "Okay, tell me. Publicist, representation, label, crazy fans--"

"Katy," Kris answers, adding with a hint of deeply appreciated spite, "and Melody." Folding his hands on his belly over his threadbare t-shirt, Kris sighs. "They just--" Kris blows out a breath, obviously hoping Adam can interpret that correctly.

Weirdly enough, he can. "National Geographic's _Eternal Enemies: Lions and Hyenas_?"

"But messier," Kris agrees in resignation. "So you know, I bravely went into hiding."

"As one does," Adam says sympathetically. "Though your problems seem to be those that end up as fantasy sequences on sitcoms, I just want that on the record."

Kris grins tiredly. "It's a lot less fun when you figure out it's not really you at all," he answers. "You know, I get she was a murderer and everything, but Caroline at least wanted _me_, even if it was just for my teeth."

Well damn. "And that," Adam says, pushing himself up, "is like, beyond a cry for help. Get up. There are times in life that demand pay per view, and this is one of them."

"I think we're out of ice cream," Kris says thoughtfully.

"I'll take care of it," Adam says, working his phone out of his jeans with an effort and hitting speed-dial four. "That's why Anna is the most overpaid PA in LA. Go choose a movie and--"

"Rum?" Kris says, sounding hopeful.

"I taught you well," Adam answers approvingly as the phone begins to ring. "Want anything else?"

Kris grins back. "Hurry."

* * *

Spot is draped comfortably over the opposite side of the couch by the time the third movie ends; even more satisfactorily, Kris is sprawled belly down across Adam's lap, one arm tucked under his head and the other wrapped securely around Adam's thighs, bonelessly content beneath a light blanket and mouth faintly shiny from melted ice cream.

Adam looks up at the soft pad of feet and sees Anna's too-short pajamas riding up her ankles and a slight smile on her face as dawn breaks just outside the half-drawn curtains. "I fell asleep messing up next week's schedule," she says with a yawn, looking at Kris with tired sympathy. "Sorry about this week. We're back to regularly scheduled programming."

"Do I even want to know what happened this week?" Kris' version had been low-key and fairly understated; Adam's translation of Southern Laconic-to-LA English is a little shaky but kind of horrifying if he's right.

"What always happens when a person is mistaken for an object," Anna answers tiredly. "And when that person starts to wonder if that's all they are." Crouching, she looks at Kris, biting her lip. "It does something to you, you know, when you're suddenly famous overnight for a pretty voice and pretty face and everyone's defining you by it."

Adam's fingers freeze in Kris' hair, making Kris shift, eyes opening sleepily, blinking at the sight of Anna. "Hey."

"Hey, sweetheart. You up for brunch today or can I cancel it? Because I kind of already did?"

Kris yawns. "If you managed to outtalk Melody, I'm totally buying you a car."

"I like cars," Anna says helpfully. Standing up, she braces a hand on the arm of the couch. "I miss my condo. If Reina doesn't fucking call off her scriptmonkeys, I seriously do not know what I will end up doing in a fit of sleep-deprived rage."

"You look worse than Kris," Adam says critically. "Which is saying something--ow! Bitch."

"Dick," Kris answers sleepily, rubbing soothingly at the place on Adam's thigh he'd pinched. "What are we watching?"

"Um." Adam squints at the TV. "No idea."

"Sit down," Kris tells Anna, gesturing toward the other end of the couch. Spot makes an affirmative sound, and after hunting up a blanket, Anna sits up for all of ten seconds before falling asleep across Kris' legs, Spot curled up in her arms. Kris shifts enough to turn his head, breath warm against Adam's belly through his t-shirt, and Adam cups the back of his neck and thinks about the difference between wanting someone for who they are and wanting them for what they represent. It's pretty easy to mix up the two, but Adam has never made the same mistake twice. He's not starting now.

* * *

"Okay, one," Adam says, sitting on the counter as Kris makes an early afternoon breakfast, "clear your schedule for the rest of the weekend. And maybe Monday and Tuesday, too."

Kris looks up from chopping up onions and delicious, delicious bacon; there is no member of the fat family that Kris was not taught to love. God protect Southern boys raised by food-loving mothers. "I--"

"Done," Anna says from the kitchen table, typing into her phone. "I love your PA, Kris. She's so helpful!"

"When you say sit, she sits," Kris says with a raised eyebrow, absently holding up a piece of crisp bacon for Adam. "I'm sure blind, terrified obedience is very endearing."

"It really is," Adam agrees, leaning down and biting off the bacon to the tips of Kris' fingers. Kris looks up, startled, hand hanging midair before he belatedly drops it, staring at the unchopped vegetables blankly for a few seconds before slowly picking up the knife, face stained pink. Adam smiles, pleased. "Now two--"

"Adam," Kris starts, looking uncertain.

"Two," Adam says, ignoring the half-hearted attempt at autonomy, "we are going out tonight somewhere where there are no ex-wives, accountant girlfriends, or PAs--yes, Anna, you have the house to yourself. Please don't do anything I wouldn't do, and only about half of what I would."

"Aww, you trust me." Anna puts down her phone, chin resting on her hands. "I'm touched."

"Three, Anna--kill your ex or make up or _whatever_, and get some sleep before something tragic happens, like you forget and start actually scheduling me meetings," Adam says grandly. Anna scowls. Kris tilts his head back to give Adam a sardonic look. "Okay, don't kill her. I think Cameron might notice the three of us sneaking into his backyard to hide her body and orange is _so not_ my color."

Anna sighs as Kris buries a laugh against his elbow, avoiding onion-stained hands before returning to his chopping.

"Four--"

"There's a four?" Kris asks, dropping the mix of vegetables and chopped bacon into the egg mixture. "Someone has too much time on their hands."

"It has been a week where there was not nearly enough," Adam admits, glaring at Anna, who waves back and picks apart a muffin.

"I noticed," Kris murmurs, almost as if to himself; looking down, Adam sees the pale skin on the back of his neck turning red. "Fine, four, Anna, clear Adam's schedule--"

"Done," she says, finishing the muffin and licking the crumbs from her fingers. "And hey, omelets? What are you waiting for? I'm off tonight and I plan to use it as God intended; one spa, one make-over, and no less than six clubs, three of which I devoutly hope I will not remember going to."

Kris picks up a spatula and returns to the pan on the stove, butter already melted in a thin yellow film and mixing with the bacon grease over the bottom. Sliding off the counter, Adam picks up the bowl of egg and follows him. "Four was mine," Adam pouts as Kris takes the bowl away.

"And now it's mine. You can have five. What is that, by the way?" Kris leans one hip against the edge of the counter and looks at Adam challengingly. Spot skids in to find a piece of bacon someone dropped on the ground, and gives them both an approving growl before taking it delicately between his teeth and settling at Anna's feet.

"Five," Adam says blankly as Kris' smirk grows wider; for the life of him, he can't remember.

Kris grins, tapping Adam on the nose with the spatula. "You can tell me later." Turning to the pan, Kris concentrates on the giant omelette, and Adam finds himself watching Kris' tiny smile.

* * *

It hadn't occurred to Adam before how rare it was to have Kris to himself for an entire day until he actually has one; not since Vegas, he thinks hazily, but this is better, as they are both sober and Adam is not being traumatized by Kris' slowly escalating drunken revelations (thankfully lost to a beautiful blackout) regarding his sex life and Laura the PA's role in the horror. It's not just Adam's schedule; Anna has turned incompetence into a weird kind of genius, and Adam's never had fewer soul-destroying meetings a week in his life. Kris works himself hard; it's not the first time Adam's suspected that Kris uses work and a strangely surreal social life to try to outrun himself, but it's the first time he thinks that he should really do something about that.

While Kris finishes loading the dish washer, Adam watches Anna finish up the next weeks' schedule, noting in approval that she has Kris' open as well. "I was wondering if you'd ever ask," Anna says in satisfaction, rearranging Kris' life neatly with a perfunctory text message to his assistant. "I'm off; I'll be back after lunch tomorrow to go over this week in case you want to make any changes."

"Get a new condo," Adam says, leaning against the doorway. "That neighborhood sucks anyway."

"Because rental prices in LA are that flexible," Anna snorts, shutting down the laptop and picking up a messenger bag with her other laptop and a small army of external drives.

"Find something and ask for a raise," Adam answers patiently. Anna hesitates, frowning at him. "Get a friendly real estate agent, have her pick something out, and then tell me what ridiculous amount of money I'll be paying for your continued services."

Anna tilts her head, staring at him for a second before nodding slowly, faintly surprised. "All right." Pulling the bag over her shoulder, she smirks. "Good luck."

Adam grins back. "Thanks."

* * *

After a post-late-breakfast nap, Kris and his guitar end up sitting on Adam's bed while Adam ruthlessly begins an extremely belated spring-like cleaning of his closet, though not without many a pang. Kris plays snatches of Taps at every brutal cut, ignoring Adam's narrowed eyes to mention, "I could go find a violin, if you want."

"Asshole," Adam mutters, worried to note that there doesn't seem to be a discernible change in quantity even though the pile accumulating on the bedroom floor has grown to the size of a small but noticeable mountain. "This can't be good," Adam says, frowning, not sure he's ready to kill himself trying to part with any of his shoes.

"You know," Kris says, setting the guitar aside, "you could just add a door to the next door bedroom and remodel that into a closet? No one wants to see you cry parting with a single sequin."

Adam looks at the wall. "That's genius," he breathes, and Kris collapses on the bed laughing. "What? _What_?"

Kris doesn't answer, and Adam abandons the leather annex in the back to stare him into helpless hiccupping giggles. Red-faced, Kris pushes himself up on an elbow and says, "Let's just stop your personal nightmare here and I'll call a contractor Monday, okay?"

"Done." Joining Kris on the bed, Adam stares at the pile of clothing slowly wrinkling on the floor and decides to leave it for the cleaning service. "Where do you want to go tonight?"

Kris tilts his head backward, looking at Adam upside down before hissing and rolling onto his stomach. "I--don't know?" Kris shrugs, one shouldered. "Somewhere I haven't been before? That would be pretty much everywhere."

Adam runs through his mental list; it's very long.

"Somewhere you like to go," Kris says unexpectedly, head resting on his folded arms.

"That doesn't actually narrow it down."

Kris sighs, put upon. "Somewhere you _like to go_," he clarifies, with weird, significant emphasis, like Adam isn't keeping up. Adam stares down at him. "Okay, pop quiz--you have a night off and a morning with no meetings. You go--"

"Oh. _Oh_."

"I need to get out of my head." Kris pokes the comforter with a slight frown. "Loud and glittery would probably do the trick."

"Really."

Kris looks up at him through his lashes. "You know, unless it's too embarrassing to be seen with me--"

"Oh," Adam says with a slow smile. "That. I'll just dress you first." At Kris' alarmed look, Adam grins. "I'll restrict myself to your closet," which is a sacrifice, but he'll manage. "Go shower. "

Kris pushes himself up, giving Adam a suspicious look. "My closet."

"Trust me," Adam says cheerfully, "that's all I'll need. Check your bed when you're done."

* * *

Adam's nearly halfway done himself by the time Kris shows up, coming to the bathroom door with a petulant expression. "These are not my jeans," he starts, his voice trailing off as Adam picks up the mascara. In the mirror, Adam watches Kris' expression change, but before he can comment, Spot barks, getting both their attention as he skids by Kris and putters into the bathroom, going up on short hind legs so his front paws rest on Adam's calf and staring up with wide-eyed pseudo-affection.

"What do you want?" Adam asks suspiciously, crouching. Pulling back, Spot jumps, landing on Adam's leather clad knee and barking happily as Adam rubs between his ears. Coming up on his hind feet, he rubs his muzzle cheerfully against Adam's mouth, smearing his fur the dark red of drying blood. "That's an oddly appropriate look," he says with a grin, catching the tiny head in one hand. "Kris, hand me that--"

"I know which one," Kris says, voice strangely tight. Squeezing between Adam and the counter, he picks up the bottle and a cotton pad, kneeling beside them. "Hold him still--" Carefully, Kris cleans off the worst of the mess until the fur is only a faint shade of pink. Spot bares his teeth and licks Kris' hand before making a kamikaze leap to the floor and barking his way out of the room.

"That dog," Adam starts, shaking his head as he gets to his feet to check the damage in the mirror. "I swear he does this--"

Kris stands up too, dropping the pad in the trash then reaches for another. "Here, let me--your hands--" Kris looks down, pouring the cleanser onto the cotton. "I know how to do this."

Adam braces a hand on the counter as Kris reaches up, expression intent. "I mean," Kris says, wiping slowly beneath Adam's mouth, "remember the--it used to drive you crazy when I'd forget to clean up before bed. I said I was too tired and you said--"

"You're never too tired for an appropriate skin care regime," Adam breathes, careful not to move as the pad wipes across the corner of his mouth, coming back stained dark. "Though let's face it, some of us had better numbers in the genetics lottery--"

"Whatever." Kris gets another pad; to Adam's surprise, his hands aren't entirely steady. "I--it's weird, but I used to watch you get ready in the morning a lot."

He'd noticed; at first, Adam had assumed it was a variation of straight-boy-at-the-zoo syndrome, but Kris' personality never matched the implicit accusation, and after a while, Adam had wondered if it was something Kris was used to seeing Katy do in the mornings, something normal in the Idol mansion when nothing else was. Adam's a performer by nature and personal preference; it's never bothered him to know Kris watched him, peeking over the edge of a book or glancing up from beneath a pillow before coffee. On tour after performances when Adam would get ready to go out, Kris would sometimes sit only a few inches away in the tight confines of the bus, already dressed but content to wait out the post-show adrenaline watching Adam before they left.

"I kind of missed it," Kris continues, head down. "It was, you know--" Kris cuts himself off and putting the container down, pad clenched in his hand. "I don't know. I just liked it."

Abandoning the crumpled pad on the counter, Kris picks up the jar and brush. "I remember when you taught me to do this," he shrugs, dipping the brush into the jar absently and leaning back against the counter and drawing Adam closer. "Hold still."

Adam had; he'd taught by example, and one night three shots past drunk, Kris had let Adam and Allison have their way with him, grinning at Adam kneeling between his legs on the couch because on tour, because sometimes you're too tired to walk one more step and you have make your own fun. He'd fallen asleep in Adam's lap, smearing pink and bronze and jade into Adam's shirt, bonelessly warm; it would be three days until the divorce papers came and Adam had still wanted to believe he was the kind of guy who would be able to let Kris go.

Kris reaches up, drawing the brush in a short line on his lower lip with a steady hand. Three strokes, then he dips the brush back in the jar blindly, eyes fixed on Adam's mouth. Adam braces his other hand on the counter, watching Kris in the mirror paint the smeared color perfect. When he's done, he blinks like someone just waking up and seems to realize he's trapped himself against the counter.

"So," Adam says a little blankly, watching Kris jerk, staring at him with faint panic, dropping the brush, "you really have been watching."

Color stains Kris' cheeks. "I--" Kris stops, licking his lips nervously, and Adam tries to decide what he wants to look at most. "Yeah," he breathes, head tilting back, eyes fixed on Adam's mouth. "I have."

Adam shifts his weight, leaning forward to brush a kiss against Kris' mouth, lips bitten red and soft, and Kris makes a surprised sound, the jar dropping with a soft plop on the rug. In the back of his mind, Adam remembers every time Kris watched him, feet away or barely inches, then Kris touches his face, callused fingers skidding uncertainly down his cheek.

"Adam," he breathes, and that's an invitation if Adam's ever heard one. Curling a hand in Kris' hair, Adam kisses him again, crowding him back against the counter. "Ow," Kris mutters, grabbing for the edge with his free hand. Reaching for Kris' hips, Adam takes the shorter path, licking away the sound and easing Kris onto the marble, one bare foot kicking Adam's knee before locking behind it like Adam had some completely insane idea of going somewhere else. Kris locks a hand behind his neck and reaches back, clearing the counter behind him with many breakable results but what-the-fuck-ever, Adam will go _shopping_. Later. Much later.

Then Kris pulls back, licking his lips, smeared messy red and swelling, eyes dilated black. "Pop quiz," he says huskily, "you have a night off and a morning with no meetings. You _stay home_. With me."

"Genius." Adam wipes excess color from below Kris' lower lip with his thumb and watches it slide between Kris' lips, licking it clean. Adam pulls it free and kisses him again, hot and sweet and Kris kisses back like someone who has been thinking about this for a lot longer than a few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours; like someone who used to watch him in a mirror and from the distance of another bed and thought about it then, too.

Before he knows what he's doing, he's got a knee on the counter and Kris is bent half against the wall, and well, this is familiar, but this isn't a club bathroom, and they have a goddamn _bed_. When he slides off, Kris makes a protesting noise. "No," Kris says, stubborn and a little vicious, using his teeth, and Adam almost forgets what he was trying to accomplish, "you don't get to--you can't do this, you can't--"

"Not _here_," Adam manages, realizing that while he doesn't really care that much _where_, his back will care very much later. Kris fights him, mouth distracting, sliding down his chin, and finally Adam catches both narrow wrists and bites Kris' lip, hard enough to feel him shudder. "_Stop_."

Kris blinks hazily, startled, and Adam pulls him off the counter and through the door, over a pile of clothes that now that he thinks about it, he doesn't like _anyway_ and pushes him onto the bed in a loose-limbed sprawl. Kris watches, wide-eyed, when Adam crawls after him, half-sitting up before Adam pushes him back down. Bracing himself on one hand, Adam tries to clear his head enough to ask some highly pertinent questions, and there's no possible way he'll remember how to form words if Kris touches him. Drawing Kris' hands above his head, he pins them with one hand. "Kris--"

"Either put up or shut up," Kris says, arching his hips distractingly. "You call _me_ a tease--"

"Are we--having the same conversation?" Adam says, bemused, as Kris raises a knee, pressing against Adam's hip. "Kris--stop that, I'm trying to--" Kris grins, all teeth, spreading his legs and God, he can't even remember what he _wanted to say_. "I'm not _stopping_, cut that shit out."

Kris' eyes narrow. "I'm not drunk this time."

"You--_what_?" Context, context, context, okay, _what the fuck_?

"Last time," Kris snaps, like this is something they've _discussed_ at length or something. "Then two tequila shots later you're getting laid in the bathroom and I'm about to marry an American Idol fan--what the _hell_ was that about? Was that a message or something?"

Married, fan….holy shit, _Vegas_. "I _didn't_," Adam breathes. A serial killing orthodontist, an accountant, and an ex-wife later, and _now_ he's finding out-- "Wait, wait, I don't--" Context: holy fuck, he is never getting that drunk again. "Huh."

Kris sighs, staring up at the ceiling with a patient look. "As a message, it was kind of the opposite of subtle."

"Well," Adam says philosophically, "that was a blackout I could have lived without. That wasn't a message." Before Kris can comment, Adam reaches down, twisting open the button on Kris' jeans. "This is. Any questions?"

Kris' breath catches, and Adam kisses him before this can get any more deeply into irritating revelations, because seriously? "That was rhetorical," Adam says when he lets Kris breathe again. "Very, very rhetorical."

"Um." Kris' flush brightens, and Adam wonders how far it goes down, then realizes hey, he can _find out_. Sitting up, he pulls Kris up and strips off the thin t-shirt, sighing a little in satisfaction. It's not that he's never seen Kris like this; it's that before now, he's never had the right to do anything about it. All flawless, pale-gold skin, the kind of slim body that's always been Adam's weakness, but it's the look on Kris' face that makes him push him down, stretching him out long and lithe, docile when Adam pins his wrists above his head to look at him.

"Take a picture," Kris says breathlessly, grinning up at him. "It'll last longer."

"Do you ever shut up?" But that's rhetorical too; Adam lets go of his hands and Kris twines his fingers in the blanket, arching when Adam eases the tight denim off his hips and down his thighs, the soft cotton of his boxer-briefs after, discarding them off the bed to follow the bright flush of heat spreading down Kris' chest.

Reaching back, Adam curls his hand around one narrow ankle, drawing Kris' knee up, palm following the rough hair up his calf, curling around his knee, dragging three fingers down the soft, pale skin of Kris' inner thigh to open him wider. Kris makes a startled sound, swollen lips parting to say, "Adam--"

"Don't interrupt," Adam says, digging his nails into the tender skin at the join of his hip; Kris gasps, head tilting back, revealing the long, perfect line of his throat. "Beautiful," Adam breathes; wanting Kris hadn't prepared him for how this would feel, seeing Kris spread out like this, belly jumping with every stuttered breath. He watches Kris' face as he licks a slow line over his stomach, sucking a kiss into the warm skin to hear Kris' breath hitch, shuddering when Adam thumbs pale pink nipples hard.

"God, you're perfect." Sitting back on his heels, Adam takes off his shirt, watching Kris' eyes dilate swallowing black and hungry, _starving_, has to kiss him while he works off his pants, leather slippery in his hands, wondering why the fuck he'd even bothered to put them on.

Impatience makes him clumsy and he can't bring himself to care, kicking off the leather and burying his hands in Kris' hair, lick away the stuttered moans when Adam presses his thigh against Kris' cock, wet head sliding against his skin, hips arching before Kris makes himself stay still. "Good boy," Adam whispers, "so good, I knew you'd be," and sucks new bruises into the arch of his throat, wanting to leave more on every stretch of skin, biting _mine_ into the rough skin of his jaw, the sweet curve of his shoulder, red blooming where he pushes his fingers into the thin skin of Kris' hip.

"Adam," Kris says, another shivering arch against Adam's thigh, "Adam, _please_\--"

"I'm going to take my time." Adam sucks one pink nipple dark red, grazing his teeth over the tip to feel Kris shudder; fuck slow and fuck easy, the taste of Kris' skin branded into his tongue. Shifting his weight, Adam braces himself on an elbow, cock sliding against Kris' in a white-hot tease. "Okay, I'll do that _next time_."

Kris groans, shaking when Adam reaches between them, control eroding with every slick-hot thrust, sliding his thumb over the head of Kris' cock, watching Kris fall apart under his hands until he bites the lobe of Kris' ear and breathes, "I want to see you come."

Kris arches up into Adam's hand, panting every time Adam lets him breathe, nails biting crescents into his shoulders and scratching bright heat down his back, gasping, "Adam, please, please, Adam, God," until the breathless chant is Adam's name alone, and Adam tightens his grip, Kris drawn tense as a wire beneath him and tightens his grip in Kris' hair, holding his eyes and tells him, "Come on, baby. Show me. I want to watch it."

Kris goes still, and Adam can feel skin break beneath Kris' fingers, blood welling up hot, and he's shaking as he comes, dazed and panting desperately until Adam steals his breath, rutting against Kris's stomach until the world dissolves bright-hot like a thousand stage lights and a million screaming fans, like the way Adam fell in love with him, huge and burning away everything that was there before and leaving something else, someone else, brand new in his skin. Burying his face against Kris' shoulder, he mouths the sweaty skin until he remembers what it feels like to breathe.

He'll remember this for the rest of his life, of both their lives; pushing up, Kris dazed and pliant, fingers knotting in his hair when Adam slides down the bed, licking both of them from Kris' belly and teaching Kris what they taste like with his tongue, slicking two fingers wet to trail them down until he can slide them easy, easy into the tight heat of Kris' body. Kris gasps, thighs tensing. "Oh baby. We're _so_ not done."

* * *

Kris doesn't even bother lifting his head, one hand raising to gesture in the vague direction of the door. "Yeah, no, I'm not moving. Maybe ever."

"It's not that I don't approve of this plan," Adam starts, because really, if Kris wants to spend the rest of his life in Adam's bed, well, who is Adam to interfere with such an important life decision, but that brings up the pressing question of _food_. And only a raw food diet by delivery will support this lifestyle choice.

Adam knows, _knows_ that there are objections he could make to that, but right now, he's not sure what they are. Cooking is highly overrated and he could learn to like more vegetables, or at least fake it extremely well. "Kris--"

"_So_ not kidding," Kris says, husky-low, drawling like pouring a line of honey slow, slow over bare skin. A little helplessly, he slides a hand down Kris's back, feeling the instinctive arch of his body. "Mmm."

"Food," Adam says, though really, that can wait. Just outside the closed curtains dawn is breaking, pale pink and gold slipping through the slit to pool on the floor. Gently, he presses his thumb into the hollow at the back of Kris' neck, rubbing just to feel Kris go boneless, and one day, this has to stop feeling like such a surprise, a revelation; one day, and he wants that day, this will be mundane, normal, unnoticed, to touch Kris like this, to have the right and the privilege and everything those words will mean. "I'm keeping you," he murmurs, bending down to press a kiss against the back of Kris' neck.

"Hmm." Kris uncurls, easing onto his side. "Okay." The brown eyes flicker open. "Pancakes."

Adam grins, kissing the tip of his nose, bending to taste the curve of his slow, pleased smile. "Pancakes."

"Make me pancakes," Kris answers drowsily. "And bacon."

"I can do that." He has no clue how to do that, but that's what the internet is for. Kris opens his mouth at the next kiss, hooking an arm around Adam's neck and pulling him down. Lazy making out on the body warmed sheets, half-asleep and barely moving, following the curl of Kris' tongue into the wet warmth of his mouth, and it's hours later before Adam emerges enough to remember, right, _food_.

Kris doesn't open his eyes, smiling sleepily from sheets twisted around him, murmuring, "Hurry," and "Bring syrup." He pauses, licking swollen lips. "A lot of syrup."

That is _inspired_ advice.

* * *

Adam sets his iphone out of range of any potential kitchen-related emergencies and easily retrieved in case of fire (not that that Adam's ever set his kitchen on fire or anything. It doesn't count if it's someone else's kitchen), not surprised to find he actually has all the ingredients, because Kris is the grocery shopper in this family.

Adam's never done anything he wasn't good at it, and pancakes aren't going to start. Consulting the phone, he hunts up fruit (blueberries, huh), butter, syrup, flour, water, and a bowl, and works out how to combine them into something that won't require him to call for take-out or cause an impromptu test of his smoke detectors.

The oil is heating in the pan without any sign of random ignition, the batter is waiting, and the door rings, which is just. So. Typical.

Spot, curled up in his bed by the kitchen island, looks up, ears raising as he leaps onto the floor and skids three feet on his tiny ass before righting himself, barking wildly at a dead run toward the front door.

Reluctantly, Adam leaves the pan and follows the sound of Spot's cheerful barking, wondering how unlucky Anna must have gotten last night if she's here before noon. Mocking her is probably not appropriate employer-employee relations, but it's weird how little he cares these days.

Opening the door just as it rings again, Adam forms the perfect remark in his head and then realizes that unless Anna shrank and went through another round of experimental hair, and had some serious plastic surgery, he's looking at Katy.

"Hey," she says awkwardly before Spot throws himself at her ankles, barking like it's going the way of the lime leisure suit. "Oh," she says, softer, crouching to pick him up, "so this is Spot." Lifting him, she smiles, rubbing her nose against his. "I've wondered what you looked like this time."

This time? Abruptly, Adam remembers that he really hates that dog. "Katy."

Shifting Spot to the crook of her arm, she looks up at him, a grin tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Adam. Can I come in?"

It's on the tip of his tongue to say no, because being an adult means you sometimes regress to the level of a fourteen year old girl with a potential for truly disastrous results. "Sure," he says, backing into the house and vaguely relieved he actually got dressed in anticipation of involving himself with things that could catch on fire.

Following him back to the kitchen, Katy takes a seat on a stool at the island, sitting Spot on the granite to bend down and stare into his eyes. "So everything's okay?" she asks and tilts her head like she's waiting for a response. Spot barks. "Good." Rubbing his ears, she smiles at Adam suddenly, brilliant like a new morning, and somehow, Adam had forgotten how beautiful she was. "It's good to see you again. How's everything going?"

Adam pours out a measuring cup of batter into the pan. It takes a lot of concentration to make perfect circles, after all. "Pretty good."

"I'd say better than good," she answers dryly. "Where's Kris?"

"Asleep."

Spot barks something that seems eerily like a question. What, is she the new dog whisperer or something? "Yeah, hold on, let me get you down and you can go get him."

"Are you--" Adam turns around in time to see Spot trotting toward the stairs and so it's insane, insane is fine, he wants to _stop Spot_. Hand clenched around the spatula, Adam looks at Katy, trying to articulate something that doesn't sound psychotic. "He _listens_ to you?"

That wasn't it.

"No, he just fakes it well," she answers fondly, which shouldn't be comforting, but it is. Chin in her hands, she sighs. "When he was a daschund, she'd do this thing with her tail--"

Adam puts down the spatula and turns off the oil; carbon monoxide poisoning? Does he even have _gas_? "Okay," he says slowly. "Let me start with _what the fuck_ and--well, there's no 'and' here, _what the fuck_?"

"Right," she says, and it's like every phone conversation they've ever had all rolled into a surreal one. "I forgot. You probably don't remember--"

"Don't--wait, wait, no--_what_ daschund?"

"Our dog," she says, eyebrows drawing together in confusion. "She was a daschund then--"

"You didn't have a dog," Adam says; this he knows. "I visited your house and raided your refrigerator and spent quality time on your couch. I would have seen a dog. You didn't even have _fish_."

"Well," Katy says, sounding doubtful, "he _looks_ like a dog--"

"_Looks like--_"

Katy squints at him, like he's the crazy one here. "Okay, what is--" She stops, eyes widening. "Wait. You _know_ about him!"

"Know _what_?" Katy opens her mouth. "And if I don't get an answer that isn't crazy, you're going to find out what I did to your ex-husband last night, _sans_ euphemisms. Categorically."

Katy winces. "Ouch. The night you called me, you said he found a puppy and I _told you_\--"

"You told me not to send it to an animal shelter and that it made Kris happy," Adam answers, voice rising toward something he will not admit is hysteria. "Not what I would call _sufficient information_\--"

"Oh wow. I must have been really drunk." Katy settles her chin on one fist, bemused. "Crap. But didn't you guess--"

"Alphabetically."

"Right." Katy frowns at her manicured fingernails, and Adam suppresses the urge to check his own; it has not been a week to check for flaking. "So. Spot wasn't always Spot. When I had her, we called her Gracie."

Adam stares at her, trying to interpret that into something possible.

Katy shrugs, studying her cuticles with an intense expression. "Is it too early for alcohol?"

"No," Adam says carefully, searching out the blender, "it's really, really not."

* * *

"It's--complicated." Katy huffs a laugh, finishing the first glass in a single swallow. "She sort of--I don't know how to explain it? She's lucky."

"Lucky." Adam examines the word and applies it to the last two years of Kris' life. "He's not lucky. He--"

"She--_he_\--is like, I don't know, counting cards when you play poker? Or--okay, he fixes the odds. When things go right, they go _really_ right, and when things go wrong, he--"

"Stacks the deck?"

Katy nods enthusiastic agreement. "That. She--_he_ can't make Kris do anything, or anyone else, for that matter. But he sort of--changes the odds in Kris' favor? So if, I don't know, Kris does something that would not be to his benefit--"

"Like accidentally marrying a fan while I'm making out with Elvis in the chapel bathroom, or marrying Laura the PA on purpose," Adam says a little hollowly, thinking of a dog that's not a dog and a universe filled with coincidences that really aren't coincidences at all. "Hold on--Anna."

"Your PA? Yeah, that's totally Spot's work." Katy looks at Adam through her lashes, eyes sparkling in amusement. "I guess he _really_ needed to stack the deck this time. The thing is, in the real world, everything doesn't happen for a reason--sometimes, it doesn't mean anything. With Spot, when he's working, _everything means something_." Katy pours them both second glass. "No one will ever remember seeing him five minutes after they've left him. There are no pictures of me and Kris with Gracie or you and Kris with Spot because the paparazzi _ forget they have pictures_. I brought him to Idol and when I visited at the beginning of the tour, and no one remembers a thing. That's how he works."

Adam tries to process this; on balance, it makes a surreal sort of sense when combined with rum. "Why does he--"

"It's what he does." Katy meets his eyes; it's impossible to look away. "Do you remember Gracie now?"

Adam shakes his head. "No," he starts, then feels something shift, something click, something _move_\--and over the nauseating bend of reality, Adam sees Katie smile, bittersweet like dark chocolate, like a chocolate, a chocolate--. "_Gracie_."

"Tell me."

"She was--" Adam gropes after the not-memory; she was small and chocolate brown, round as an overstuffed sausage, getting tangled beneath his feet and curling up in his lap before leaping off the couch when Kris opened the door, darting out into the night. "She ran away."

"You met her a dozen times," Katy says, looking at her half-empty glass. "But it's only the last time that counts."

It was _raining_; a storm that emerged unexpectedly from a clear sky, gentle rumble to water-logged downpour, soaking the ground to mud in minutes. "Our last night in Conway," Adam breathes; how could he have forgotten that? "She ran out the door and you said--you said she'd never done that before."

"She never had." Katy traces a finger through the condensation fogging her glass before taking another drink. "What happened next, Adam?"

"Kris went after her." In the middle of a storm, in the middle of the night, of course he would, of _course_; the surprise wasn't that Kris went, it was that he remembered to put on shoes, even if he forgot both pants and a coat, like a flannel shirt could protect him from a night where lightning would turn the sky as bright as noon. "Lightning," Adam says, appalled. "I wanted to _kill_ him. What the hell--"

"And you said--"

"Oh fuck this, I am not explaining to America that their American Idol drowned in a mud puddle." Adam remembers the night in bright slices of time, too-vivid like a fever dream. Stepping off the porch into the pouring rain and unable to believe Kris could possibly, possibly be real, trudging through ankle deep mud with lightning lighting the world in ragged bursts, looking for his dog. "And I--" Grabbed his coat, went onto the porch to search the endless dark that seemed to have swallowed Kris whole. "Did--did I forget to _put on shoes_?"

"Oh yeah." Katy grins, crossing her arms on the granite and resting her chin on her hands. "It was hilarious when I thought about it later."

Adam eyes the level of alcohol remaining in the blender and divides the remainder of the rum-heavy slush between their glasses. Concentrated on the bottom, it has a kick, burning his tongue and all the way down; weirdly enough, it helps him think. "I found Kris," Adam says, catching the memory more easily now, smoothing into familiarity, as if he'd never forgotten at all. "He stopped when I shouted at him, only a few feet from--" Nothing. It stops there. "He stopped. And he looked at me and--" Adam struggles; it's just out of reach, what happened that night. "I--I don't know."

Katy nods. "You won't remember the next part; don't try. You were gone an hour, but you both thought it was only minutes. I didn't want to believe you, but I did anyway."

Gracie had climbed from Kris' arms to Adam's, curling up wet and cold against his chest, nosing at his mouth curiously, and Adam remembers Spot doing that only hours ago--a soft nuzzle and a cheerful bark, holy _shit_....

"Before she was Gracie, she was Rufus," Katy says softly. "He was a Labrador. Kris had had him for as long as he could remember. I must have met Rufus a hundred times, but I only time I remember is the last. We were walking down the street and the crosswalk sign turned before we were halfway across. Rufus met us on the other side and followed us home. His mother said we were gone an hour, but it only felt like minutes.

"The next day, Kris stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and told me we were being followed. When I turned around--" Katy catches her breath, eyes distant. "When I turned around, he was picking up this--this little bundle of dirty fur and then it _moved_. Kris bathed her and I brushed her out and then I gave her her name. That night, his mother sat me down and told me everything that I've told you." Leaning back, Katy wipes her eyes. "I--his mother and I, we always said the day I met Rufus for the last time was the day I fell in love with Kris, that Rufus _knew_. But I don't--I think it's the other way around. I think that's when Kris fell in love with _me_."

Reaching for his still-full glass, she pulls it from his nerveless fingers. "So. Any questions?"

Less steady than the amount of alcohol he'd had could ever excuse, Adam picks up the blender. "Screwdrivers?"

"Like you wouldn't believe."

* * *

Kris in sweatpants about five sizes too large and a t-shirt from a late nineties indie band is almost painfully cute; carrying a tiny, reality-bending dog just puts the icing on the entire adorable picture.

Spot barks happily, wriggling free of Kris' arms and leaping for the arm of the couch to crawl down Adam's thighs and settle on his chest, licking his nose joyfully. "_Now_ you like me," Adam breathes, ruffling his fur. Spot cocks his head, and he doesn't say _finally_, but he looks it. Kris bends over, resting his hands on Adam's bare knees, currently bent over the arm of the couch.

"Why is Katy asleep on the other side of the couch?" he asks carefully. "I'm leaving out the fact you're both drunk in our living room and it's not even noon because I'm pretending it's not happening. Just lie."

"Frozen screwdrivers," Adam answers expansively. "Better than mimosas."

_"I made her wait, made Gracie wait," Katy says, heels abandoned by the stool and pitcher balanced in one hand, because if they're going to get as drunk as Adam thinks they need to be, they'll need someplace comfortable to pass out. Settling on the couch, she sighs. "She would have followed you both the next day, but she had to wait for me, like Rufus had to wait for Kim. She told me--she told me this was when she had to learn the difference between giving up and letting go; it only took her a day. It took me a little longer."_

"Pancakes?" Kris asks a little helplessly. Spot curls up in the space between Adam's shoulder and neck, snuffling curiously. "Did you light something on fire?"

The fire alarms didn't go off (that he remembers), so Adam's going with 'no'. "I don't think so?"

"Right." Kris turns away, padding toward the kitchen, feet barely visible beneath the folds of soft cotton, one hand scratching absently at the back of his neck and the shirt riding up to reveal the small of his back exposed by the sagging waist of the sweatpants. Adam will never be too drunk to appreciate that kind of view.

_"It's not fair," Katy says from beneath a fall of blonde hair as she eases onto the couch, one bare foot kicking Adam's shoulder until he sits up. "Not to anyone. Not when it takes two to make a marriage and only one of them is still in love enough to want to."_

From the kitchen wafts a smell that under non-vodka-and-rum circumstances would be delicious; Adam cringes, wondering if he has the energy to crawl somewhere free of cooking pancakes and wait to die. Katy groans softly, burying her face in the cushions. "What is--"

"Kris is cooking because he hates us." Kris isn't subtle in making a point.

Katy stills, then abruptly, Adam's being suffocated beneath blonde hair. Pushing it aside, he sees Katy staring down at him. "When did Kris learn to cook?"

_"But it's even worse when neither of you are, and what you're holding onto isn't the person you love, but what you think they were supposed to be."_

"He's always cooked," Adam answers; he's getting used to conversations he doesn't understand. "Why?"

"Huh." Pulling her hair back, Katy shudders and lies back down with a slow, stomach-rolling bounce. "He couldn't even boil an egg."

The smell of bacon penetrates the room in all its greasy, nauseating glory; oh fuck you, Kris. Life lesson fucking _learned_. "I'm so not making it through the eggs," Adam tells the ceiling as Katy makes a choking sound.

_"He doesn't know; don't try to tell him. He won't remember five minutes after you're done. He remembers them all, but not like we do. I think, for Kris? Spot just wants to be his dog."_

A small, stomach churning eternity later, the sound of feet padding from the kitchen encourages Adam to open his eyes. Kris circles the couch, crouching to give Katy a glass of something before coming back to look at Adam, eyebrows raised, and extending the second glass. "Here. It'll help with the hangover so you can eat."

"I love you," Adam breathes in abject gratitude, sitting up and regretting it, but the cool glass is pressed into his hand and he drinks it down without bothering to twitch at the taste. When Kris takes the glass back, he's smirking.

_"How long do I have?" Adam counts the years of Kris and Katy's marriage; it won't be enough, nothing less than the length of his life could ever be, but he'll take it. He'll take it and never regret an hour, a minute, a single second. "Before--before Spot--"_

_Katy reluctantly lifts her head from his shoulder, frowning at him blearily. "How long--oh. Oh. Right, you need to get Kris to take you home to his parents." Scrambling clumsily to her knees, she grabs for his chin and makes him look at her, mouth curving in an affectionate, so very drunken smile. "You can meet their dog. He's a golden retriever. His mother named him Dave."_

Kris puts the empty glasses on the coffee table, coming back to the couch and looking down at Adam. "Feel better?"

"Maybe." Reaching out, Adam wraps a hand around Kris' wrist, pulling him into his lap and kissing the surprised sound from his mouth. Cradling Kris' face between his hands, Adam watches the smile slip into something startled and serious. "I love you. You know that, right?"

Kris leans forward, pressing his forehead against Adam's and dragging in a shaky breath. "Yeah. I guess I do."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Suppose It's Too Much to Call Coincidence [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/373544) by [Lunate8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunate8/pseuds/Lunate8)




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